Southern Mississippi will see its second Tuesday night (ESPN2) football game in as many weeks as the Golden Eagles travel to Tulsa to play the defending C-USA champion’s Golden Hurricane in Tulsa’s Skelly Stadium on October 3rd. In Tuesday’s (Sept. 26) game, USM allowed Central Florida a back door cover escaping from Orlando with a five-point straight up (SU) win 19-14. Tulsa has been tagged as a –6-point favorite coming into Tuesday’s game. A total of 47 ½ points has been established for the game.
Tulsa, (3-1 SU, 2-1 ATS) traveled into a tough road venue Sept 23rd to battle the Midshipmen of Navy and stole a SU win 24-23 and got the cover +5 ATS.
It will be the sixth meeting between the two schools, with the series history at 2-2-1. Tulsa won last year’s meeting in Hattiesburg, 34-17. Tuesday’s game will be the first meeting in Tulsa since 1993, a 30-30 tie. Southern Miss is 0-1-1 against the Golden Hurricane in Tulsa, dropping a 13-10 contest there in 1991.
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Leading the offense for Tulsa is quarterback Paul Smith who has already passed for 962-yards and nine touchdowns, against three interceptions. Smith averages 240.5 passing yards per contest. On the season, Tulsa has made 84 first downs and has scored 121 points, averaging 30.2 points per contest. The Golden Hurricane offense has accumulated 1,169 yards of total offense (1,127 passing, 542 rushing), averaging 417.2 total yards of offense (281.8 passing, 135.5 rushing) per game.
Brandon Diles leads the running backs with 215 rushing yards on 45 carries, averaging 4.8 yards per carry. He has scored two touchdowns on the year, averages 53.8 yards per game and has a long run of 26 yards on the season.
Ryan Bugg leads Tulsa with 16 catches for 199 yards and two touchdowns, averaging 49.8 yards per game. Idris Moss has a team-best 250 receiving yards and 11 catches averaging 62.5 yards per game. Diles has 10 catches for 104 yards.
Defensively, Nelson Coleman has a team-best 32 tackles followed by Nick Bunting with 21 tackles for Tulsa.
Jeremy Young leads the offense for Southern Miss with over 600 yards passing 46-of-84 against three interceptions. Young who averages 150 yards per game had his career-best day against UCF throwing for career-highs in yards per game.
Freshman running back Damion Fletcher has 491 rushing yards on 86 attempts, averaging 5.7 yards per carry and 122.8 yards per game. He posted his third-consecutive 100-yard rushing performance against UCF. He is the nation’s top true freshman running back and ranks No. 1 in C-USA and No. 8 nationally in rushing yards per game also ranking No.4 in scoring and No.2 in all-purpose yards.
Tulsa coach Steve Kragthorpe is excited about the Hoopla of ESPN coming to campus for the Tuesday game.” It’s a great opportunity for us as a football program, as a university, and as a city to showcase what we have.” Kragthorpe said. “We have had them here before, but it's a new set of announcers, a different set of guys. I think we had coach Curry last year. I think it will be a neat situation for us to showcase to these three guys what this community is all about not just the football. Like I said before, Tulsa, Oklahoma is a great place to live and I think a lot of people have an image of Oklahoma that will be dispelled after they come to Tulsa."
